The Phoenix Suns shift in attitude continues to get national attention

The Phoenix Suns shift in attitude continues to get national attention

Suns and Rockets tonight as you heard Bernzie preview right there. Here to give us more of a preview, talk Suns and NBA with us. Senior NBA writer for Yahoo Sports, Dan Divine joins us once again via video. Dan, thanks for uh making time for us. We appreciate it. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, guys. We finally we we didn’t get to see it in Phoenix. We do get to see the Suns take on KD in Houston without Devin Booker. But I mean, what do you make of what you’ve seen from the Phoenix Suns? We we marvel on a daily basis about the turnaround in culture, in belief, in effort, all of these things. And I think people around the league are really starting to notice. Absolutely. I mean, there are only, I think, five teams in the NBA that are in the top 10 in offensive and defensive efficiency this season. And I think if you would have asked two months ago, would the Phoenix Suns be one of those teams? I don’t think you’d have gotten a lot of takers on that. Right. And so the the the immediiacy I think it’s it’s has been shocking to see the degree to which the overhaul vision uh that Matt Ishbia and that front office that he brought in has has been it’s really taken root that like we’re going to just overnight make ourselves into a team that’s fun to watch. We’re going to make ourselves into a team that competes in a way that is going to like reward your fan dollar. That like we’re going to rebuild a fractured trust. that kind of thing tends to take a very long time under normal circumstances. And like your bestlaid plans don’t often come to fruition, the roster they’ve constructed, the the leadership of Jordan Autton, the structural, the schematic way he wants them to play that uptempo, in-your-face sort of physical defense. We’re going to try to generate turnovers. We’re going to be a pain to play against. Frankly, a team that is built somewhat in the vision or the mold of Dylan Brooks like he this is something we have seen with Dylan Brooks before. The Grizzlies when he was there, they kind of had his identity. When he left, things have wobbled from there. The Rockets, he goes there. They take on an identity that looks an awful lot like Dylan Brooks. Obviously, they haven’t wobbled since then. But then he comes over and now he’s in Phoenix. And you start to see there’s something to be said for somebody who raises the floor and establishes a tone. And I think the Rock the Suns rather have certainly played like a team that has a sort of, you know, sneer and a snarl and a little bit of a screw you energy. And that’s pretty refreshing after a couple years where it sort of seemed like everybody was just waiting to punch out. Dan, and what’s interesting is you mentioned all those things that Matt Ishbia has said and you’re 100% accurate about all of those. And every time he said one of those things, everybody in the national media and locally, uh, we all rolled our eyes because we all like, “Come on, dude. It ain’t that easy.” And it was the new owner syndrome. And and people were saying this this is the worst situation an NBA team has been in in a quarter of of a century. And there was no way out. the fact that they’ve been able to spin this thing and do these things on the fly. What does it tell you about the magic of chemistry in basketball or maybe just the NBA in general? Yeah, I think I mean one thing that it tells me is that it’s something that I’ve believed for a while. The straightest line to competence in a turnaround is on the defensive end of the floor. Like if you nail down and button up things like we get back on this team, we get back in transition on this team. We pressure the ball. We don’t allow easy lollipopped passes on this team. We make it hard for you to get into your offensive sets. We don’t just give up and concede and give you let you walk the ball up the floor and do whatever you want. We make we sort of fight for every inch. If you can get buy in on that and then turn yourself from a bad defensive team into a average or even above average one, that’s kind of the straightest way to being a regular season competent team. And we, you know, we’ve seen that in a number of places. I mentioned the the Brooks and and uh Fred Van Vleet arrival in Houston kind of transforming that culture there and then making them into a good defense and then that sort of took off from there. I think you’re seeing that in Phoenix as well. And you need the players right to be able to do it. And so being able to say Jordan Goodwin off the scrap heap, you are an energizer and you are somebody who’s going to set a tone. Dylan Brooks, you are going to set a tone. Colin Gillespie, you’re going to set a tone. Ryan Dunn, you’re going to guard everybody and you’re going to set a tone. when you’ve got multiple guys doing that and then you know it all flows downhill. It flows from leadership and Devin Booker he he is not going to have the same sort of outsized numbers as your top your primary MVP candidates. He obviously has gone through before the groin injury a rough patch there uh in terms of his shotmaking. But if he’s going to be willing to get up and guard, if he’s going to be willing to go dive for a loose ball, those sorts of commitments, that sort of of of energy, it all flows downhill. And if every everybody sees the guys at the top of the food chain willing to do that, then there’s no excuse for them not to. And I think, you know, whatever the reasons were, there wasn’t maybe that same level of commitment and buy in these last couple of years. And I think that is an easy way for that energy to drain out of a team. Dan Dine, who covers the NBA for Yahoo Sports, our guest here on Bickley Marada Mornings. For as good as things have gone in Phoenix, on the other end of the spectrum, they’ve gone horribly wrong in LA with the Clippers. We see the Chris Paul situation. There’s a lot of interest in that situation here in Phoenix because of what Chris Paul meant to the Suns for a few short years. Uh what do you make of how the Clippers handled that? And is this the end of the road for Chris Paul? We talk about the word unceremonious. This fits it, but I would love to see Chris Paul go out on better terms. I think everybody would. You know, this this feels like um when you wind the clock back a few months and if the end of the line for Chris Paul was he started 82 games as the guy who kind of helped show Victor Wanyama and Steph Castle and that young Spurs team the ropes, that would be a pretty perfect period at the end of the sentence. If you’re not going to end on a championship, that would be a great one. Chris Paul having been like this kind of itinerant basketball preacher bringing the gospel of valuing possessions all over the league, you know, to backwater teams or teams that had been in in dire straits and then turning them around as he did in Phoenix, as he did in Oklahoma City when he got there and, you know, as he did in San Antonio. And this feels like a really grimy way for that to to end. So hopefully this is not the end of the line there. That said, I think this is a situation where maybe multiple people can be wrong and right. You know, like you can imagine a scenario where Chris Paul forever the most demanding guy in the room, the guy who has the right answer to everything and is not afraid to let you know it. Um, and who uh has graded on people, fellow, you know, players, coaches, etc. before. That is one thing when you are the best point guard in the world and the guy who is leading a team to a top five offense and perennial deep playoff runs. It’s a little bit different if you are averaging like three points per game and making 30% of your shots and you’re the 11th guy on the bench and the people you are saying that to are like a head coach who’s won a championship, a two-time Finals MVP, uh you know, a lot of veteran guys on the oldest roster in the NBA. That message probably hits a little bit different and probably, you know, it doesn’t fall as as as welcomely on those ears. So, I have no doubt that the things that Chris Paul was saying in terms of holding people accountable were right because I mean at for evidence, look at how things have gone in Los Angeles over the last few months. I’m sure that the the critiques that he was making made sense. I’m sure that also hearing it day after day after day from the 14th guy on the bench at a certain point you’re like, “What is this juice worth the squeeze?” And maybe the answer to that, you know, turned out to be no. You would like to think there could be a more graceful dismount than the middle of the night on a road trip. Um, but you know, maybe graceful dismounts are not necessarily the things the Clippers do super well. No. Great. No, they are not known for graceful dismounts. But you’re right about Chris Paul. I’m not sure what coach would welcome that in uh to a team right now given what just went down with the Clippers. And I’m quite certain some young players wouldn’t be wanting to take advice or be lectured by a guy that got released mid-season. Um or not released, sent home. All right, let me ask you about Giannis. Where is this whole thing going with Giannis and the Bucks? And where might he end up? So, uh, a couple weeks ago, my wife and I took our daughters to see the the the Rockets at Radio City, and they’ve got this bit where they’re all dressed up like toy soldiers, and there’s a a pretend cannon that goes off, and everybody’s slow motion falls backward together, and it takes like 10 minutes from the time the the cannon goes off till the time the last uh rocket falls down. That’s what this feels like. Like a slow mo a cannon went off months ago, and we are just sort of slowly watching everything teeter and fall over. Um Giannis before the season had said, you know, listen, I’m all locked in on this group and if I change my mind in six, seven months, that can happen, right? And now we’re two months into the season and it seems like the mind is changing. And so, okay, well, what changed? You got the chance to see what the roster around you looked like in in Milwaukee. And obviously, I think everybody thought that roster was not going to be particularly good around him, and certainly if you removed him from the roster for any extended period of time. And then he has the adductor strain injury. They lose four straight games, they don’t look particularly good doing it. And that evaluation process turned Giannis to say, “Oh yeah, actually maybe we should keep having that long longgoing conversation about whether where my future is.” Like nothing changed. Everything is the same. You maybe just don’t want to actually say I want to leave. And I can understand that, right? If you have been the guy and like the central figure in the best stretch of basketball in that franchise’s uh you know last half century, the guy who delivered the first championship in 50 years, the best player the franchise has seen since Karem Abdul Jabbar, since Oscar Robertson, like that’s a heavy weight to say now I need to leave. We saw Damen Lillard struggle with that on the way out of Portland. You know, not wanting to be the bad guy, but looking at it and saying the only thing that matters to me is continuing to compete for championships. this setting does not seem like one in which I can continue to do that. So, get me someplace that I can. And also, by the way, I want it to be only this one team that maybe doesn’t give you the best uh trade package back. So, where is it going? It’s going to a messy place because it seems like things end badly otherwise they don’t end. And I think the question is just like how heavily does Giannis want to put his thumb on the scale. Is it going to be it only needs to is it going to be like the Carmelo out of Denver thing? it’s only going to be New York and then get what you can out of them and then if that is true what are the Knicks going to be able to give up and willing to give up and are they still gonna have a team afterward or is it going to be a more open bidding because if it is a more open bidding I don’t think the Knicks can win that bidding. I think there’s a lot of other teams that have a lot more draft capital and enticing young piece piecers and things like that to be able to you know give Milwaukee what they’re looking for. Um, and then but it’s going to be need to I think Giannis is gonna have to say this is over because I don’t think the Bucks are gonna I don’t think the Bucks are going to look at it and say we’re gonna have a good time with our fan base if we let go of this guy if we move him for cents on the dollar. I don’t think the fans are going to take too kindly to that even if they understand the situation and it’s just going to be it’s a staring contest to be like who’s going to be the jerk in this situation and I don’t think anybody really wants to be. So it’s all happening very very slowly. Yeah, Dan, great stuff as always. Thanks so much for joining us today. We appreciate it. My pleasure guys. Have a great weekend. Thank you. You too. Dan Divine, NBA writer for Yahoo Sports, joining us via video here on Bickley and Marada Morning. Thanks for watching Bickley and Marada. Click to see the latest Bickley blast and hit the button in the middle to subscribe to Arizona Sports.

Dan Devine, senior NBA writer with Yahoo! Sports, joined Bickley & Marotta to preview the Phoenix Suns matchup in Houston against Kevin Durant and the Rockets and discuss Dillon Brooks’ impact on the team’s shift in attitude on the court.

Suns star Devin Booker to be reevaluated in 1 week with groin strain: https://arizonasports.com/nba/phoenix-suns/devin-booker-groin/3604483/

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